Triskaidekaphobia
by QueenStrata
Summary: This is as close to fear as it gets. [Thirteen phobias. Thirteen stories.]
1. catoptrophobia

A/N: Oh my. I'm so excited to be posting this! This is the first in a series of thirteen short stories as written for the community 13fears on livejournal (my claim being for Organization XIII). I'll be writing and posting these in order of the members so, of course, first up is our darling Xemnas. Who is really hard to capture, but at least writing as if from his thoughts is a lot better than making him talk. Ye gads.

Warnings: Nothing for this one.

Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, they belong to Squaresoft and Disney and probably some other folk who aren't me. Pity.

Summary: This is as close to fear as it gets. (Thirteen phobias. Thirteen stories.)

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_01. catoptrophobia; the fear of mirrors (they reflect our true selves to us)_

There were no mirrors in The World That Never Was, no way to see your reflection except in the puddles of water that congregated every time it rained—which was not as often as it ought to have been. Even the few windows were colored, nearly opaque, and they reflected nothing.

Xemnas knew the members outside of the original six whispered about this fact in the hallways, debating the reason for it as passionately as their nonexistent hearts would allow. Some said it was because Xemnas didn't want anyone to be tempted to truly care about their appearance, to find some false comfort in pretending to feel as if they looked good. A few muttered that Lexaeus had broken all the mirrors when he first saw himself, a concept that would have been funny if Xemnas could feel. But not one of them could ever even hope to touch upon the true reason. Because the simple fact was that Xemnas, inasmuch as it was possible for him to do so, feared his own reflection. Not that he'd ever admit to such a weakness.

Xemnas had looked into a mirror once and only once, the day he'd woken up as the Nobody instead of the Somebody. He'd seen a handsome young man with a serious face and a longing look in his eyes, intelligence hidden by a certain blankness caused by his amnesia. He was dressed in ridiculous frills, pale colors, the look of a scholar. The man who somehow lived in Xemnas still, impossibly yearning for a heart that he shouldn't want. In short, he'd seen a fool.

The image had caused him to lash out, to attack the mirror with all his considerable strength and crunch the reflecting shards under his feet until there were a million fools looking out at him, each more taunting than the last. He'd lifted a hand to his chest, feeling for a heartbeat he knew couldn't be there, and ran from the room with a strangled cry. He couldn't feel, but he remembered fear, and his body tricked him into believing he felt it, powerful and numbing.

When he'd later collapsed in the bed that had belonged to the hearted fool, he'd laughed until he couldn't move from exhaustion, and then built up every wall he could think of. He had no feelings. He would be calm, collected, _heartless_. And he would never look in a mirror again, because he knew that doing so would break those walls in an instant and he'd once again become the fool he'd seen once in the mirror and every night after in his dreams.

There were no mirrors in his castle, in the world he had created. He couldn't afford to be a fool.

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A/N: Like the concept, hate how I wrote it. Such is life. Next up, The Freeshooter! 


	2. hemophobia

A/N: Yeah, um, difficult to finish? I don't know. Xigbar just didn't want to settle down, so finally I pretty much was like "I give up, take a fucking nap". XD There isn't much by way of signs of fear, here, but it's hard to fit that in when your characters have no actual emotions.

Warnings: Mmm, I'm gonna go with nothing.

Disclaimer: What, you think I could make Kingdom Hearts? As if! (Couldn't resist, sorry.)

Summary: This is as close to fear as it gets. (Thirteen fears. Thirteen stories.)

_02. Hemophobia; fear of blood (it's just a little blood)_

There was so much fucking _blood_, all over his ridiculously frilly suit and spilling across the floor and dripping off his face. He wondered where it came from and why he was in so much fucking pain; he lifted his right hand to his forehead, making to rub the heel of his palm into his eye like he always did when he was thinking, and swore when he realized he almost couldn't see it coming. Fuck, he only had one good eye and that meant his depth perception was off and how the fuck was he supposed to do anything if he couldn't goddamn see?

He staggered to his feet, feeling oddly distanced from his panic (shock, he decided hazily, though that didn't explain why he hurt so damned much), and stumbled over to the building he knew would be somewhere to his right, if only he could goddamn see. He needed to get up high, to see what had happened, why he'd been unconscious—and, fuck, it hurt to lift his goddamn arm. But he had to get up and he tried to push the pain out of his mind and _moved_, and he was probably going to pass out because he was still losing blood but not before he looked and--

Holy shit.

Radiant Garden was beautiful, he thought to himself, but not right now. He wasn't the only thing covered in blood—the square below him might as well have been a pool of the sticky red substance (okay, that was exaggerating), and he thought he could see a few dead bodies. But that shadow-beast, that gigantic thing born of the heart's darkness that Ansem had called Heartless for whatever-the-fuck-reason, was nowhere to be found and he had a feeling that he had killed it. Good, great, now he could go home and report. Status: Alive.

Except he was exhausted and his foot slipped out from under him; he could feel himself falling from the edge of the building and he thought longingly of just being in bed; shadows swirled suddenly before him and, just like that, he was.

Okay. That was not cool. It threw the status of him being alive into question. The only person who could do this was Xehanort, after he'd gotten away from his insane research, and that meant--

"Dude," he said aloud just to hear his voice, "I'm a fucking zombie."

"Braig?" a surprised voice questioned, and the towering form of Dilan came in from an adjoining room. "When did you get ba—oh hell. I knew I should have gone with you. Eleaus can go--"

"'S dead," he interrupted, levering himself out of his bed and aiming in the general direction of the bathroom. "Missing an eye. Bleeding fucking everywhere. Taking a potion and napping in the tub, let Ansem know." And he slammed the door in his friend's face, wondering why the hell he didn't care that Dilan was undoubtedly hurt at being blown off like that.

The answer was staring at him from the mirror, still dripping blood; his left cheek was in shreds and there was a large gap where his right eye had once been—but if he hadn't known that he was himself, he wouldn't have recognized whoever was staring back at him. His hair had always been black, but now it was being taken over by gray streaks that made him look decades older than he actually was, the yellow of his eye was exacerbated, his ears were pointed...he looked completely different, yet somehow the same. So who was he? Not Braig anymore, surely, not now that he had no heart to call his own.

He didn't have the right frame of mind to worry about it now. He pulled open his medicine cabinet, oddly unrelieved to not see the strange face, and grabbed a couple potions. Downing them without a second thought, he turned to put the bathtub on the hottest setting he could stand and laboriously stripped out of his layers of ruined clothing. He levered himself into the heat with a grunt, hissing at the feel of the heat against his skin, and leaned back for his well-deserved nap.

In his dreams, there was fighting and blood and shadowy creatures that weren't the Heartless coming for his soul.

A/N: ...I don't know, I just like that last line a lot. Uh. I can has reviews:D


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